Willpower . . . won't

Yesterday I watched Dr. Oz on Oprah. In the episode it followed the progress of 3 people who were quitting smoking. They all kept a video journal detailing the agony of willpowering themselves to quit. Willpower is like the bully forcing the Other-Than-Conscious mind to do something it doesn't want to do. It's kind of like blowing up a door with a stick of dynamite when you could have just used a key. Find the key.

Cigarettes are a very addictive drug. Who in this day and age doesn't know they're bad for you? And does knowing intellectually change the behaviour? I know an asthmatic who smokes. Think that's stupid? Wait--this person is also a doctor. John Morgan points out that it is not the intellect that got you to smoke in the first place, and it's not the intellect that will get you to stop. That goes for any habit or behaviour, really. So how do you find the key? You go to the source and work with it: that Other-Than-Conscious part of you that's driving your behaviour when you're not even aware of it.

There's one gal on the show, Wendie, who is set up to fail because her husband still smokes. So if she doesn't go back to it (which Dr. Oz suggested she would!) she will replace smoking with something else. For most women, it would be food. It pained me to watch those video diaries, not only because the quitters were in such distress, but because it was so unnecessary. I have personally witnessed a crowd full of smokers throw their cigarettes away AND CHEER at the end of a 2-hour Smoking Cessation seminar. They walk out of that room as non-smokers. We've had 3-pack-a-day-ers and smoked-for-40-year-ers, and they leave it behind.

So I wrote to Dr. Oz and suggested that we both have someone in common who could help with the smoking cessation: Doug O'Brien. Doug worked with Dr. Oz for 6 years, helping create the Dept. of Complementary Medicine at Columbia Presbyterian. Doug is also one of the hypnotherapists for John Morgan Seminars. It is what we do.

P.S. If you're reading this and have stopped smoking from our seminars, then I invite you drop Dr. Oz & Oprah a line. If you smoke and want to quit, get to a seminar or buy our DVD.